Courting Rituals
by Violent-Medic
Summary: Those who belong to the Legion generally don't need to court women. Vulpes is no exception. As such, his attempts at seduction are... somewhat different from the norm. One-sided Vulpes/F!Courier.


Another non-kink kink meme request. Anyway, this one was Neutral F!Courier/Vulpes Inculta. With Vulpes getting a crush after seeing her slaughter some fiends and... trying to woo her in a rather grisly fashion. It was far too fun to write. The Legion wouldn't be too experienced in wooing women, no?

* * *

Vulpes was sure this was love.

He generally considered most females a waste of time. The only ones he saw regularly were slave girls, and in any case it was forbidden for the soldiers to even fully acknowledge their presence. And this woman... the Courier, as she seemed to be known as... didn't seem that different at first. When they first encountered each other in Nipton, the conversation was short and straight to business. She left no strong impression on him.

Later on, however, he was on his way to New Vegas to discuss business with the Omertas. Incognito, of course. It wouldn't do to stroll into the Strip in full Legion armour. And he took a path that led him near Westside and into Fiend territory. Knowing more about the enemies besides the NCR that the Mojave possessed would help them when the time came to take over.

And there she was. Surrounded by fiends. Backed only by a cyber-dog. Vulpes watched from a safe distance. He fully expected her to get slaughtered. Just walking into a mass of fiends like that. She was not slaughtered. The fiends fell quickly under the hail of bullets she sent at them.

Vulpes could pinpoint the moment it happened. One of the fiends got up close and her repeater jammed. So she pulled out a combat knife and shoved it into his stomach, gutting him mercilessly. Blood sprayed over her clothes, dying them a deep red. She didn't even blink, simply turned away and wiped her knife off.

It was that moment when she gutted the fiend, gutted that piece of human-shaped filth, that Vulpes fell for her. Hard. He was determined to have her.

The difficulty was how to woo her. Being part of the Legion didn't require talent in that particular ability. Vulpes was charismatic and the best of the Frumentarii, yes. But he had never been required to woo women. If anyone in the Legion wanted a woman, well... they just took them. They never asked, let alone initiated full courting rituals.

But someone as wonderfully deadly as that... Vulpes doubted she would take the standard Legion method well. No doubt if he tried it would end in battle. No, Vulpes would have to initiate more subtle, romantic methods.

A deadly, blood-soaked woman like that was comparable to a war goddess his old tribe worshiped before being absorbed by the Legion. Despite his loyalty to the Legion, Vulpes remembered these myths well. And his tribe had worshiped that goddess by cutting off the limbs of their enemies and offering them to her.

It seemed like a sound idea. But his first two attempts didn't go over well.

The first time he'd left an arm of one of the fiends on the doorstep of her Novac motel room, that cyber-dog had picked it up, taken it away and buried it. Much to his frustration.

Later on, he'd left another fiend arm inside her room at the Wrangler. She'd accused the cyber-dog, Rex, of 'bringing food inside her room.' After a long, seemingly one-sided conversation with the dog during which they apparently argued over whether the dog had brought it in or not, she tossed it out.

It was quite irritating. The dog was now getting credit for his gifts. So, Vulpes went to the extra length to present something that no animal could.

Vulpes tracked down one of the fiend leaders, a man called Motor-Runner. Sneaked into the vault the man was holed up in like the fox he was named after. Killed him, cut him into pieces before slipping out again without the fiends even noticing he was ever there, taking all the pieces with him.

He left the pieces in a rather pleasing arrangement inside the presidential suite at the Tops. The head was placed in the middle with the other pieces, the limbs and guts, all arranged carefully around it. Much as a master chef would arrange a good salad.

Her reaction was quite good. A shriek of joy, he was sure. As anyone would, finding an enemy of theirs in such a condition. She seemed irritable afterwards, however. Perhaps she didn't appreciate the bloodstains in the carpet. Vulpes supposed he should have laid out a blanket.

Cutting off limbs was probably boring to her, by now. And it was something she could do herself easily enough. Perhaps a well-written poem would impress her more. Not many in this wasteland had the ability to write poetry, and it would look quite striking on the walls of an NCR base.

Vulpes targeted a small base just outside the town of Primm, as she frequented the town quite regularly and there were few soldiers there, enough for him to dispose of by himself with some clever strategies.

After grinding through several bodies with his ripper, he traced a delicately crafted poem on the sergeants' tent, using the blood of the aforementioned sergeant. He was not entirely sure that the courier could read well, many wastelanders couldn't, but the gesture was probably enough to impress her.

When she stopped inside the base and discovered both the slaughter and the poem, she seemed rather disgusted. The words that came spilling out of her mouth were less than flattering. In fact, they were rather vulgar. The phrase 'goddamn creepy' was also used several times.

It was more clear now that she couldn't read and had assumed the poem to be a typical 'you are all going to die' message. Anyone would be swept off their feet by that poem. Although looking at it more critically, Vulpes supposed he may have used too many synonyms for 'red' and 'disembowelment.'

In any case, he had sent her many gifts at this point. Perhaps it was time to tell her directly.

After inviting her to Caesar's camp (on behalf of Caesar, of course, although that order fit wonderfully into his own itinerary) he confronted her. He had intended to wait until she was clearly on the Legion's side, but after seeing her in the arena with a blood-soaked machete, running the leader of the Chairmen through much like she had done to that fiend, it just set Vulpes' infatuation off all over again. He decided not to wait.

He approached her just before she climbed on the raft back to Cottonwood Cove.

"Excuse me. But I wish to have a private word with you." He didn't want to say anything else in front of the other legionnaires. Even though she wore the Mark of Caesar, some were still having difficulty at accepting a woman among them. His infatuation wouldn't sit well with them.

"Uh. Okay?"

She followed him a bit further down the river, away from the other legionnaires.

"You've been doing some good work for the Legion so far. Your exploits are well-known across the wasteland." Vulpes maintained his usual calm appearance. It would not do well to drop it now. "But I must tell you that I've been watching you for quite some time."

"Er, you've been doing what?"

"I've tracked your progress across the wasteland. Watching you tear apart those mindless, chem-addicted fiends. It was quite an intriguing sight."

"Intriguing? They were just fiends, nothing intriguing about..." The courier stopped, tilted her head and squinted at him. "Sorry... Who are you, again? Have we met?"

That was not what Vulpes had been expecting to hear.

"...Yes. Yes, we've met. We first crossed paths in Nipton. I gave you the Mark of Caesar. We've met many times."

"Oh! Uh, yeah, I remember that. You're, um, that guy. Uh..." The courier snapped her fingers for a couple of moments, frowning. "...You're... uh... Augustus?"

"...No."

"Julius? Octavius? Antonius?"

"No."

"Hm. Never had a good head for names." She tucked her hands behind her back, looking up at him. "Uh, so you've been following me around to check stuff, right? Can I ask you something?"

"You can."

"This probably sounds kind of fucked up, but... Did you see someone sneaking up to my room and leaving body parts there?"

"Yes, I did. Actually—" Vulpes was right on the edge of confession when she interrupted him again.

"Can you tell me who they were? Because, seriously, they gotta be such a creeper. Who leaves body parts in peoples' rooms? It's disgusting."

"...Is it, now?"

"Do you even have to ask? I thought Rex was going digging in a local graveyard or something at first. So, you know who's been doing it? Can you tell me where to find them so I can tell them to... you know, quit it?"

There was a stretch of silence. Then Vulpes said, "I do know who it is. But I'm sure it won't be a problem anymore."

"Oh. Okay... cool. So, what did you want to talk about?"

"...I seem to have forgotten."

"Alright. Then I better get back to the raft. Nice talking to you, uh... yeah." She offered a sheepish smile before hurrying back to the raft. Vulpes watched the raft move away, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

Clearly his methods were too subtle for a wastelander. Perhaps he needed to research more traditional methods of seduction.


End file.
